The present invention relates to a pedal support structure for a vehicle, such as a brake pedal, and particularly a technology for a so-called collapsible pedal.
A vehicle frontal crash or the like may cause a vehicle front portion to collapse with a absorption of a crash energy, and a vehicle engine in an engine room may be moved backward thereby. In this case, a dash panel which separates the engine room from a cabin deforms backward, and a pedal, such as a brake pedal, which is provided behind the dash panel are also moved backward. As a result, a foot space for a driver becomes short, and thus it becomes easy for a foot of the driver pressing a pad portion of the pedal such as the brake pedal to interfere with a steering column and the like. Herein, a pedal support structure for an automotive vehicle is known as disclosed in, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,339,971, in which a pedal portion of, for example, the brake pedal is moved forward relatively with respect to a vehicle body when the dash panel deforms toward the cabin.
The above-described publication discloses a mechanism in which when a pedal bracket to rotatably support the pedal is moved backward, the pedal bracket is bent so as to change its position in such a manner that its pad portion is moved forward. In this mechanism, there are provided respectively a vehicle-body-side slide member at an instrument panel reinforcement which extends in a vehicle width direction in an instrument panel and a bracket-side slide portion at the pedal bracket, and when the pedal bracket is moved backward, the bracket-side slide portion slides on a guide face of the vehicle-body-side slide member, thereby changing the position of the pedal bracket. During sliding of the bracket-side slide portion, the pedal bracket changes its position while being bent, and a reaction force occurring during this time is born by the instrument panel reinforcement.
Also, the pedal bracket is fixed at two points of the dash panel and the vehicle-body-side slide member, and a fixation between the vehicle-body-side slide member and the pedal bracket is configured so as to be released when the pedal bracket has been moved backward, so that the pedal bracket can be allowed to be moved backward.
Namely, when the pedal bracket has been moved backward due to the vehicle crash, the bracket-side slide portion (hereinafter, referred to as “pedal bracket,” simply) of the pedal bracket starts to slide on the guide face of the vehicle-body-side slide member, and then at a point where it has slid by a specified distance, the fixation of the pedal bracket and the vehicle-body-side slide member is released. And, as the pedal bracket slides on the guide face, the pedal bracket changes its position in such a manner that the pad portion of the pedal is moved relatively forward.
In the pedal support structure disclosed in the above-described publication, however, when a large impact load applied to the guide face acts on the instrument panel reinforcement extremely, there is a concern that the instrument panel reinforcement may be broken and the reaction force for bending the pedal bracket may not be born properly by the instrument panel reinforcement thereby. Accordingly, the pedal bracket may not be surely deformed to an expected great degree, its position may not be changed sufficiently, and the relative backward movement of the pad portion of the pedal may not be restrained properly.
Although structural reinforcing of the instrument panel reinforcement may be considered in order to avoid the above-described problem, this may improperly cause a large-sized and heavy structure. Meanwhile, it may be considered that a front-half portion of the guide face is set to be a relatively gentle grade in order to reduce the impact load applied to the instrument panel reinforcement. For example, in the structure disclosed in the above-described publication, the guide face of the vehicle-body-side slide member has a relatively gentle grade of its front-half portion in order to reduce the impact load to the instrument panel reinforcement and release smoothly the fixation of the pedal bracket, whereas it has a relatively steep grade of its rear-half portion in order to obtain a greater position change of the pedal bracket.
However, since the pedal support structure of the above-described publication tries to materialize such functions with a single guide face, the guide face thereof would be relatively long longitudinally and vertically and have less flexibility in the layout.
Also, although other pedal structures for a vehicle are known (see, for example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,327,930 and 6,481,311), these structures still do not solve the above-described problems properly.